Theorizing the Corporation

Abstract

Economic theories of the firm, and the legal analyses of corporation law that build on them, are ordinarily formulated in universal terms, as if “the firm” were in fact a singular category of economic organization. This chapter takes as its starting point the diverse and globalized world in which we exist. Beyond the familiar forms of “Western” capitalism—which itself is plural—much of the development in East Asia and Latin America, for example, has been characterized by strongly statist forms of capitalism, challenging many of the standard assumptions about the proper boundary between the market and the state. In the late twentieth century, “Confucian capitalism” became the rallying cry in many East Asian economies, suggesting that delimiting a clear boundary between the market and the family might be equally difficult. Insofar as these developments reconfigure the division of labor among the institutions of the state, the market, and the family, how can we account for them theoretically?